Leaving las islas
Trip Start
Jan 16, 2008
1
10
35
Trip End
Apr 19, 2008
Bocas Town,
Panama
Thursday, February 14, 2008
We went diving for the last time on Tuesday, with a great couple of dives to end our time here. It has been raining a fair bit so we were expecting the visibility to be bad, and it was. Still, we saw a fair bit and the icing on the cake came in the last few minutes of the last dive - we got to see a little turtle. Cool!
Tonight we're having a bit of a farewell party at the school, which will be nice.
We've both really enjoyed our time here on Bocas. We've learnt loads at school and are both speaking Spanish much better than we were when we arrived, although still a long way from being fluent. Kristina thought she wanted to do mostly conversation while we were here, but she has instead concentrated heaps on grammar, so will be using the rest of our trip to practice instead. For me, pretty much everything was new so...
The school, El Paraiso in Bocas del Toro is really excellent. It is small and friendly. The teachers are great and the atmosphere is wonderful.
We stayed at Hospedaje Alexandra the past 3 weeks and really enjoyed our morning talks with Aura - our Panamanian mum :)
If you ever make it to Bocas, be prepared for a laid back experience. Everyone is really friendly, the lifestyle is very relaxed and the place definitely runs on "Island Time". Don't get upset that you have to ask the serving staff when you want another beer, instead of them asking. A super place to chill out.
Tomorrow morning we take the boat over to the mainland and then the bus down to David which is almost on the pacific coast. We'll be there for a couple of nights before heading back into Costa Rica and up to the Osa Peninsula. The weekend after that it's off to Ecuador for part two...
